Developing a Skills and Professionalism Curriculum – Process and Product
27 Pages Posted: 28 Mar 2011
Date Written: March 1, 2010
Abstract
Effective lawyers have an impressive array of legal knowledge, analytical thinking abilities, and professional skills, attributes, and values. Traditional legal education excels at helping students learn some of what effective lawyers need, including substantive law, analytical thinking, and legal research. Conversely, legal education has been less successful in teaching students the other skills, attributes, and values that effective legal professionals command. How can law schools revise their educational programs to more effectively prepare graduates for the practice of law? This article offers a model for responding to that challenge developed by Gonzaga University School of Law. The article summarizes the forces pushing curricular reform in legal education, describes the process Gonzaga employed to comprehensively review its required curriculum, and presents Gonzaga’s revised required curriculum as one response to the challenge to prepare students to enter the profession upon graduation. Gonzaga’s revised required curriculum features two skills and professionalism labs in the first year of law school, second-year legal research and writing courses focused on litigation and transactional drafting, and a third-year externship or clinical experience.
Keywords: curriculum, skills, professionalism, legal education
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